LOCAL ELECTIONS 2026: IEC audit trail challenges ANC’s claim of technical problems

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has argued that its audit trail shows no system activity in two of the six municipalities at the centre of the ANC’s candidate-list dispute.

For Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns, the IEC said it found no record of activity during the final two hours before the deadline for political parties to submit their candidate lists.

This revelation has now cast further doubt on the ANC’s account that “technical problems” prevented its operators from completing the submissions.

The IEC has put the system records before the Electoral Court as it opposes an application by the ANC to have its candidate lists for the six municipalities treated as having been submitted before the 5pm deadline on 28 August.

The fallout has affected just under 200 ward and proportional representation candidates in the Mangaung metro and Lejweleputswa District Municipality in the Free State; uMshwathi Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal; and Port St Johns, Ingquza Hill and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape.

The ANC had argued that its candidate information had already been captured and uploaded onto the IEC’s Online Candidate Nomination System before the deadline, but that operators were unable to complete the final electronic submission after experiencing problems with the system.

But the IEC’s answering affidavit tells a different story.

Rejecting the ANC’s ‘bald assertion’

IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo, in his affidavit, set out how the ANC was alerted to the approaching deadline, with correspondence showing that the party received automated reminders. The affidavit also refers to IEC guidelines warning administrators of the importance of submitting a candidate list as final.

On the matter relating to the two councils, according to the IEC’s records, there was no recorded system activity in either Ngquza Hill or Port St Johns between 3pm and 5pm on 28 August, the final two hours before the nomination deadline.

This is significant because the ANC told the IEC that its administrators had encountered problems at about 4.34pm and again at 4.57pm, including being logged out of the Online Candidate Nomination System and returned to its landing page.

But the IEC’s records show that the last recorded capture for both Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns was at 10.10pm on 27 August, the evening before the deadline.

Mamabolo said he denied the “bald assertion” that the ANC encountered technical difficulties with the Online Candidate Nomination System that prevented the party from pressing the “submit as final” button for the affected submissions.

“I deny that at 16h57, the ANC’s administration were logged out of the OCNS (Online Candidate Nomination System) and returned to the landing page. This is not borne out by the objective evidence. Even if they were, they could log back in.”

He also disputes the ANC’s account of the earlier alleged interruption at 4.34pm, saying that this too was not supported by the evidence before the court.

Mamabolo further said that an IEC official, Kgosietsile Michael Tshoke, had received a call from ANC official Shanaaz Lamara during the final hour and checked with the commission’s information and communication technology department about possible technical problems.

According to Mamabolo, “the evidence attached earlier indicates that there was no issue and hence the ANC and other parties were able to submit”.

Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns

These two municipalities are also the most consequential for the ANC. While the party retains its ward candidates in four of the six affected councils, both its ward and proportional representation nominations are at stake in Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns.

ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula this week acknowledged that the loss there would be particularly serious.

The ANC also maintained that it did not attempt to add candidates after the deadline and that the names it wanted on the ballot were already inside the IEC’s system.

“The candidate information itself was on the commission’s system before five o’clock,” Mbalula said.

“Whether that is submission in law is the question the court will decide.”

The party’s case is that the electronic information had been received and stored before the cut-off, and that the failure to complete the final step should not invalidate the nominations.

The IEC, however, draws a distinction between information being captured or uploaded and a candidate list being formally submitted.

Its case is that the online system allowed parties to upload, capture, save, review, amend and replace candidate information before making the final submission. The legally significant step, it argues, was selecting the option to “Submit Wards/PR As Final”.

Without that final submission, the commission says, the nominations were not submitted in law.

That distinction is now at the centre of the Electoral Court battle.

ANC made other submissions minutes before deadline

The IEC’s audit trail goes further as it also revealed that the ANC continued submitting lists elsewhere before the deadline.

While the party’s lists for the six disputed municipalities remained unsubmitted, the IEC said the party successfully submitted both the ward and proportional representation lists for Inxuba Yethemba Local Municipality at 16:56:39 and 16:57:34 respectively, only minutes before the 5pm deadline.

The IEC says this is evidence that the ANC was able to use the system to make final submissions in the closing minutes of the nomination period.

Its records for the other four affected municipalities also show activity on the system, although none resulted in a final submission.

In Sundays River Valley, the IEC says there was one recorded activity at 4.52pm, while the list remained marked “Not Submitted as Final” at 5pm.

Walter Sisulu Local Municipality had two records at 4.55pm. Umshwathi had two records at 4pm, while Mangaung had one at 3.04pm.

Mamabolo added that the commission’s records showed that the ANC had failed to complete the required final step before the deadline.

“The ANC ran out of time. It must face the consequences for doing so.”

Warnings ignored

The IEC also says there were warnings sent to the ANC before the deadline.

According to its affidavit, automated emails were sent to the ANC’s authorised party officials on 26 August, two days before nominations closed, warning that numerous municipal lists had not yet been submitted as final.

One of the emails relating to ward nominations ran to 92 pages, listing wards where candidate information had been captured but the final submission had not been completed.

The commission says the system dashboard also displayed alerts warning users where candidates had been captured but lists had not been finally submitted.

This is important to the IEC’s argument that the ANC’s difficulties did not begin only in the final minutes of 28 August. It also points to the ANC withdrawing a list for Chief Albert Luthuli at 3.44pm on deadline day as evidence that the party was still making changes shortly before the deadline.

System-failure claim

In addition, the IEC has rejected the suggestion that a system-wide technical failure prevented the ANC from completing its nominations.

It says its technical records show that the eight Independent Electoral Commission Application Programming Interface servers had 100% availability and zero seconds of downtime, while 23 online servers also recorded 100% availability and zero seconds of downtime during the relevant period.

The IEC further says other parties were able to submit their nominations, and that the ANC itself successfully completed submissions for municipalities outside the six in dispute.

The ANC, meanwhile, has stressed that it is not asking the IEC to reopen the nomination process or allow new candidates to be added after the deadline.

Mbalula said the party had asked the commission to process information that its own system had received and stored before the deadline.

“We asked to add no name. We asked to change no list. We asked for no late nomination and no extension of any deadline,” he said.

He has also framed the dispute as a disagreement over the legal meaning of submission, rather than an attempt by the ANC to secure special treatment.

“The movement says it has. The commission says it has not,” Mbalula said, adding that the Electoral Court would decide the issue.

The ANC said 181 of its candidates were affected across the six municipalities – 130 proportional-representation candidates and 51 ward candidates. The party says it lodged 9,128 candidates nationally, of whom 8,947 were ultimately registered.

The IEC, however, says the problem is broader than the ANC, with 2,274 candidates from 45 political parties in the same position after information was captured but final submission was not completed.

That broader impact is central to the IEC’s argument that allowing the ANC’s lists to be accepted after the deadline would undermine the election timetable and create unequal treatment between parties.

The dispute is now before the Electoral Court, with the ANC asking the court to declare that its lists in the six councils were submitted timeously and validly.

The ANC on Thursday also moved to block the Democratic Alliance from joining its appeal case at the Electoral Court against the IEC’s refusal to accept candidate lists from the six municipalities that were not “submitted” by the deadline.

This follows the DA filing opposing papers this week, asking the Electoral Court to grant it leave to intervene in the ANC’s appeal.

The ANC argues that the DA’s intervention should not be allowed, while the DA has argued that the ANC is essentially asking the IEC to change its rules to suit the party. DM